I'm lounging in a low couch and I'm short to begin with. My head is still too high to see the underside of something counter level. If it's higher than standard counter height...

Find a bookcase, plop a chair in front, and see how high the shelves have to be to be visible from below. You just might be okay. If not, go ahead and paint it. :)

I currently have a raised breakfast bar with laminate and the most basic builders grade support clearly visible underneath but honestly you can't see the underneath at all unless you bend down and look at it from directly below.

I will likely have a counter overhang in my breakfast nook that is about 3' above my family room. As such, I have the same question. I thought about having some stainless sheet fabricated for the underside. Depending on the counter material (I'm considering something in the white/gray family), it could blend in fairly well and be easy to clean. Could you possibly have wood veneer made to match your cabinetry and go over the plywood?

I think flat black paint would make it nearly invisible.

I like the flat black idea and if that doesn't meet your needs maybe get ply wood with a nice wood veneer on one side such as cherry or oak to match other wood in the room. How are you going to treat the edges? Will they show or are you going to have a stone edge around the slab to cover the plywood edge. Black paint would work fine I think.

If you use 3CM thick stone - you will not have to use a plywood subtop and the entire discussion is then moot.... In these kinds of applications - I always hone the exposed underside, then seal the underside with Tenax Ager or Ager Tiger - there's a video attached that explains the process

and if you use 2CM stone, you should use 5/8" plywood - NOT 3/4" - IF you do use 3/4" - the bottom 1/8" will be visible from underneath when the lamination hides the bulk of the plywood subtop....

And. IF you do use plywood - what I do, is to use ACX grade = it's smooth sanded on one side, and whenever I do an overhang like that - I use the smooth side sanded-side down, you can stain it or paint it, and it looks really nice in the application you;re proposing

hth

kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: Honing the Underside of a 3CM Overhang

Well I was going to suggest you stop drinking before you fall off the stool and look up at it, but Kevin's advise is good too. ;-)

We haven't finished the underside of ours and nobody sees it - except maybe my 2 year old grandson, but he hasn't mentioned it. Ours is counter height - with a raised bar it might be more visible from the couch. Even though it isn't visible, I wish I'd thought to have them put cherry veneered plywood for the subtop with the veneer side down so it would be finished and match the cabinets. Maybe we will paint it or try to skin it. It only bothers the perfectionist in me on the rare occasions when I think about it - it hasn't been any practical or aesthetic issue.

My contractor laughed at me, but i told him...it's absolutely one of my pet peeves. Every open house i used to go to, I'd look underneath the granite overhangs. Some of the plywood fit perfectly, some actually looked like a layer of cork was put in, and some had large gaps that looked completely unfinished. When i wipe the bullnose part of my counters, i don't want the cloth to catch on plywood splinters.
I figured it was a little bit like being able to look behind the drywall...how much pride of workmanship did the subs take in their jobs?

I do like the sanding it down, then staining it idea.

I would suggest either flat black or painting it the same color as your wall paint color (assuming it is like in your picture and will be what is below it.)

I don't drink and I don't have kids, but I'm sure our cats will see the underside all the time. Gotta make it look right for them. :)

Thanks all for sharing your inputs.

And Kevin, thanks for the detailed instructions. At this point, I'm planning to do DIY soapstone for the breakfast bar tops (and the top for my sewing center in another room) because the size of the slabs will be small enough for us to handle. The DH is not completely convinced about soapstone yet, but we have time.

Ah, cats will see that as a challenge --- how do I get my claws on that? Or how do I climb THAT tree? :-D

I don't drink enough to ever worry about falling off a stool -- generally an occasional half glass of wine, but it sounded like the kind of smart reply I'd imagine if I asked the question.

I'd prefer the thicker slab, but if you have to go thinner, sounds like it will be easy enough to pay a few dollars more for a smooth finished piece of plywood and then stain or paint it. Convincing DH might be the harder part. My DH would have loved soapstone -- we just couldn't find anything that worked without cross country travel.

Seriously?

and if you use 2CM stone, you should use 5/8" plywood - NOT 3/4" - IF you do use 3/4" - the bottom 1/8" will be visible from underneath when the lamination hides the bulk of the plywood subtop....

Kevin, We have a 3/4" subtop and the lamination covers it. 2 CM is slightly more than 3/4" - it's about 0.787 so the plywood edge is covered with 3.7 hundredths (plus any thickness of the glue in the lamination of an inch to spare. It isn't much, but it is just enough to cover the plywood while leaving plenty of clearance for the doors and drawers of the frameless cabinets below which overlap the cabinet box sides.

These are temp wood countertops, but I still didn't like looking at the plywood. We have a raised bar AND a low couch. We put a band of walnut veneer that matched the cabs around the plywood.

I remember the thread you referred to on the remodeling forum and did a quick search. It's linked below and if you scroll down to the last two posts you see two great products that may be what you're looking for.

Here is a link that might be useful: granite supports

Cloudswift -

You got lucky = I've been doing this since 1985, and after the first two jobs that I did in 2cm that i used 3/4" plywood and the bottom stuck out - I got sick of screwing around with the issue, so it's been 5/8" ACX for me ever since, and like a freakin miracle - the problem has never occurred again.....

One reason yours may not have happend was that the adhesive used was non-existant, or REALLY thin. Usually, there's at least 1/8" of adhesive (I use Alex Plus latex caulk) which rasies the stone and amplifies the problem.

Some slabs are less than a true 2CM - I've seen slabs as thin as just over 1/2" - all the way up to 1" thick - all sold as 3/4" / 2CM....

like I said - you got lucky............

Natal, no, not seriously. Isn't that obvious -- on both posts? Really?

Helpful, and some funny too, comments, everyone. Thanks!

I want to do soapstone and don't care much for the laminate edge. But DH seems adamant about putting a 3/4" plywood sheet down and sees anythings else as being skimpy.

At this point, the beefy framing design I came up with will reveal quite a bit (steel and plywood) under the countertop (posted more in my other thread). I may just have to stain the plywood close to the steel and soapstone (dark-ish).

(The image does not show the 1/2" plywood and the 1/2" drywall that will cover the studs on the bar/living room side.)

What if there's a huge gap between the overhang of the stone edging and the roughtop underneath the counter? Is that right? So this way it's ugly, I feel get splinters and it feels icky - scary, actually.

Somehow, I'm thinking this isn't right... right?

So now what? Add it to the list of what's not right about my countertops? Anything to be done? Am I hijacking this thread? Should I start a new one? It's sort of related....

Lascatx, I was referring to the OP, not you.

Natal, yes seriously. I wish I'd thought about this before our "rough top" went on - it would have been relatively inexpensive to use a piece of veneered plywood instead. See aliris's post. Ours isn't splintery, but it is an exposed, if usually unseen, surface and having a finish on it is something I'd have appreciated. On a higher counter like the OPs, it will be more noticeable than on ours.

Aliris, we have a small gap between the roughtop and the laminated edge - between 1/8 and 1/4". I think one wants some gap rather than a tight fit - plywood is more dimensionally stable than other wood, but it's probably still reasonable to give it a little room to expand and contract. 2 cm granite is suppose to be okay for some inches of overhang (8?) without support so a larger gap then we have should be functionally okay.

It seems like it is pretty standard to leave this an unfinished surface, but it shouldn't be splintering. If unfinished is the standard, I'd have liked something better than standard.

@aliris19, I don't know if what's the conventional overhang of countertop over the roughtop (so, that's what that layer is called!). With a thick roughtop and no laminated edge, this does reveal too much. If I go with soapstone, I will try to convince DH to fore-go the plywood roughtop; or, I may even consider laminated edges in the stone top.

@natal, for the record, I'm always dead serious.

@mudworm, I've never seen any numbers on what overhang soapstone can handle without support. Because it is softer than granite, I'd guess that it wouldn't handle as much - but there are different kinds of strengths so I could be wrong. Maybe you could put up a post with a title like "How much support for a soapstone overhang?" Something to get the folks who know soapstone better to comment. You wouldn't wand to do it without a subtop and have it crack - especially if it fell on someones foot.

You might think of it as a sub-top rather than a rough top. You want a finished surface because it will be visible. It could be plywood with a 1/4 round molding along the edge painted to match the wall. Or wood veneer to match your cabinets.

@natal - the raw granite for our island cost over $2000 - that's not counting the fab. Looking around on the web, piece of cherry veneer cabinet grade 3/4" plywood, 4 x 8 is less than $200. I'm sorry that I didn't think of it at the time. It's true that isn't a big deal to not have that touch, but it would have been worth the small additional cost to me.

I just looked under mine (at counter ht) because I had no idea what it looked like under there:)

I also went into my daughter's room and sat looking at her tall bookshelf. The shelf that's about 52 off the floor, I could see well underneath; it *definitely* needed to look nice. The shelf at about 41 in off the floor is a little more iffy. As long as it looked at all reasonable, I think it would be fine.

For my personality, if it were anything lower than that but still high enough that it seemed to "need" to be finished. I think I would pick some wild and crazy paint color that I really like but would generally not be brave enough to use.

Hi mudworm - I haven't read through this whole thread (just skimmed), so I apologize if you already have your answer.

I recently did a 12" overhang on some base peninsula cabinets (18" deep by ~70" wide). After getting so many different opinions, I opted with putting in three 1/4" thick x 3" wide steel brackets that are attached to the back of the cabinets and lay across the top and inlayed into the front of the cabinets and hang 2" before the end of the edge of the granite. I have 3cm granite and was told (and have read) that plywood is not necessary with granite this thick and that only 2cm granite needed this (note - I'm not an expert on this).

My friend had the brackets coated to blend with the underside of the granite (which is grey). I later learned of a product called Tiger Ager that pulls the natural color out of your granite. I have a dark exotic granite and applied some to the underside and it looks so much better than having the grey.

Keep us posted on what you decide.